Buried babies from Ice Age accompanied by ancient weapons kit

Archaeologists uncover the 5,000-year-old bodies of two young children and find buried with them well-worn hunting weapons, providing valuable insight into ancient burial practices in North America.

by John Tyburski

Copyright © Daily Digest News, KPR Media, LLC. All rights reserved.

First published at Daily Digest News on November 14, 2014

Archaeologists are getting a unique glimpse into the burial practices of ancient Americans who lived right at the end of the last Ice Age, just as North America began to be inhabited. The insight comes from a 11,500-year-old burial site of two human babies in a pit in what is modern-day Alaska.

“Prior to these finds, we really did not have evidence of that facet of settlement and traditional systems for the early Americans who once inhabited this area,” says Ben Potter, an archaeologist at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. “These are new windows into these ancient peoples’ lifestyle.”

The site under investigation was originally found in 2006 during a railroad project in central Alaska, north of the Tanana River. In 2010, Potter and coworkers found a partially cremated three-year-old child in a subterranean house also thought to be 11,500 years old.

Potter and his colleagues continued excavation in 2013 and found the remains of an infant and a fetus or possibly stillborn baby about 16 inches below where the remains of the three-year-old child were found years prior. The fetus is thought to be the youngest late Pleistocene human ever found. The researchers’ findings were published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The infant remains seem to have been covered in red ochre after having been curled and wrapped. While nothing was found along with the three-year-old child, the infants had buried with them weapon pieces dating to around 11,600 to 11,230 years old. These consisted of antler rods, arrow or spear points, and sharpened stones called bifaces. The objects were adorned with red ochre as well. The researchers suggest that the objects were part of a weapons system.

“These weren’t just created and placed there,” said Potter. “Together, they form a functional hunter’s toolkit.”

What is also noteworthy is that the objects showed wear and tear indicative of having been used prior to being buried with the infants. The people who inhabited the region of what is now called the Upward Sun River were likely the Denali, the primary inhabitants of central Alaska some 12,000 to 6,000 years ago, near the tail end of the Pleistocene epoch, or last Ice Age.